Mea Culpa
by rednightmare
Summary: "Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault." An ongoing attempt at expanding Casavir.
1. What is Clear

**_Author's Note_: If you've poked around my works before, you probably know one of my favored fic flavors is to pick an RPG NPC – one that had some promise, but one I feel was left too unexplored – and flesh them out through a series of one-shots. Casavir from _Neverwinter Nights _is probably the greatest offender in that his backstory didn't really seem to exist outside one map location, and the reason for his fall from grace is untouched.  
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**So...**

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><p><strong>MEA CULPA<strong>

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><p><strong>What is Clear<strong>

He is wrong.

There lingers no doubt in this young paladin's mind as to the nature of his intent. There are no questions about certain territory. He is _wrong_, and it is as clear to him as any psalm in these fair seventeen years of his life has ever been. Even then – with knees bruising against the rock of Tyr's temple, hands steepled, head bowed in contrition, the incense seeping into his gut and making it sick – Casavir knows he can make no righteous defense of those profane promises, murmured beneath moonlight to a love that is not godly, vows that rot. There is no benediction that will avail this. And yet he tries – Even-Handed as his witness, he _tries_ – fists staunch and pale, hair militant black, pulse sloshing between his temples as confessions are taken before empyrean. It is no use. He is committed to tonight… and in swearing so, is committed to being profoundly wrong.

Good Abbot Moss leads the City Core's midnight communion and his gentleness is a hollow comfort. Furthermore, the crusader can be sure Fenthick – who stands evenly behind a prayer tome and chants off yellowed pages – has noted his presence; one cannot hide a squire amongst these sparsely-populated evening pews. But the docile elf does not ask why young Sir Bayford is here, looking so terribly solemn, and Sir Bayford does not ask for his council. He needs no spiritual guidance to see this red night clearly, bowing with back to the marbled courtyard. Cedar wafts into the chapel air, crystal-cold and laden with candle smoke; sunset makes alabaster stone blush cardinal. No, this warrior has never truly required the eyes of a priest to read what is in his heart. To present day, he has not forgotten scriptures, has not failed in his sanctity, has not miscommunicated with the divine. He has not faltered in some grave task, renounced an oath, been made to eat his words as they were spoken over an altar. Casavir has been right – _so_ right – his entire life, sworn in body and soul to a magistrate god whom he must believe understands what it is to be a man.

Because that is all he is, peeled of steel and ranking hauberk – the trappings of a heaven-soldier and the chinks of a fallible man.

As earnest as his prayers are, there is a vicious streak about them tonight; the coals of this paladin's grey stare sear behind shut eyes. His mouth is still and silent, for he cannot speak aloud. Casavir knows that it is wrong to think as he is, act as he does, feel as he has – and the forgiveness he must ask? There is wrongness in that, too.

In two hours, Casavir will stand up, legs stringy, stomach stuck to his ribs; he will drink thinly from the penitence chalice, and he will walk from this consecrated place to Blacklake – were one young paladin will murder a baronet's son.

Though he would have claimed uncertainty all those years ago, a veritable boy clad in piecemail and entangled in a murky haze like love, his innocence was not so perfect. Mordred Bryce died not from an overflow of wrath, jealousy or lust; it certainly _appeared_ so, perhaps, to the jurymen that determined the guilty squire's fate. Appearances did not guarantee truth, however. The reason for that high-born lad's death is clear to him now, two decades later and reflecting upon all the mistakes made upon his last summer season in Neverwinter. This act, like so many others, was the result of one knight with duties abundant… responsibility to omnipotent God, city and people, master and king, land, woman, family. These are a man's duties, many as they are – duties that divide, and duties that conflict.

But that was the past. His duty in _this_ jungle, an igneous mountain east of civilization, is singular and clear: kill enemies, and fashion for the farmers crowns made from their wolfish teeth.

He is adept at this. If nothing else, Casavir is very, very adept at this.

Orcs can be frightened easily as any other foe, he has discovered, hefting a hand-axe from some jibbering shaman's unhinged bottom jaw. They are a superstitious and panicking lot; their hatred of everything Illuskan is eclipsed by pagan traditions, the marks of an old people with little science. After months warring here, the crusader knows well what shudders them. Sharp woodcutter's iron drips ichors – slops them off in brackish globules – and splatters the paint coat already drying on Casavir's skin. A grim patina of clay, granite, and orc blood; he has painted his armor and face in it, drawn violent strips across eyes and nose. These humans have pressed sinister handprints on the withers of their horses, buzzed short the manes of draft breeds that thunder beneath improvised plates. Wretched, yes – but strategically sound, and not without purpose. Disgust cannot deter a homeless army, for this country's veterans have pieced together impressive creations… chains wrapped around hooves, tusks smelted to saddles, scalps braided into tails. Sir Bayford, himself, has welded spines on his pauldrons – glued the rack of a stag upon either side of heavy barbarian helm. He has singed the bottom of a war-weary cape, ashen as cliff mud. These superstitious beasts react. They no longer know precisely what he _is_, the man thinks – Friesian mount, monochrome like lava rock, smelling pungently of dead clansmen. If the unknown stirs fear, this vile persona is a success. Flanked by eerie battle-horns, fire traps and clanging metal, a paladin has made himself a menace dredged up from blackguard legends. He does not engage in honor-combat. He charges freely when the odds are deep against him, and hunts only when the canyon sun is frail.

These heathen tribes venerate their adversaries through curses, terror-stories, and ominous epithets. "_Ka'talmach_"– he gives them an image to fit the name.

A manmade blaze and a dust storm to his back, Casavir whorls the axe as hard as he can. It crunches into an archer's collarbone. Chitin chips and unused arrows explode. This slaughter is gratuitous by design, by necessity, and because out here – so far from council chambers and manor halls – it does not matter where the mess might fall. Blades scar as they please. Hammers leave dramatic dents. Blood flashes crisp and steaming into the fragile light; dawn or dusk, it may taint wherever it lands.

Blood does not course in Neverwinter. Murder is not excuse enough to dim the tiles beneath Nasher Alagondar's castle. Casavir did not spill a drop the night he slew Mordred Bryce; he did not cut, pummel, or snap bones beneath the scale weight of a squire's suit. He only took that throat in both of his square, white hands and held it until the baronet's boy lay still.

You must understand. Tyr and the Northern Lords must someday come to understand, because the dead son's father never would. Casavir had not wanted to kill the eldest Bryce-child – had barely known him – a distant, polished name met with resentment for reasons that could not be shared. He remembers it now more clearly than anything else… how Mordred's face began to puff and swell blue, tongue frothing. He remembers when his legs had stopped flailing; when nails that struggled to draw welts through his attacker's vambraces stilled; how swift the body grew cold, pinned between a shut-eyed paladin and that circle of pretty garden cobbles. He remembers how numb his own fingers and chest and mind felt; how his hands quaked around a grave shovel, almost unable to dig; how he had thrown up into a mulberry bush immediately after, retching nothing but holy water from that night's sermon, the illness a reflex more than conscious grief. But he had done it.

He did it for duty. He did it because there were no other options apparent to him, Tyr's pendant tightening like a snare around His young disciple's neck. He did it to preserve a semblance of law in a city with cruel customs, and to retain the order demanded of a stationed knight.

Ultimately, he did it for the sake of a woman named Formosa Dalren.

What is not clear – what Casavir does not know, to this day – is why it was Formosa Dalren who should strike him so. She was lovely, bright and moneyed as considered proper for a noble daughter – but Casavir had met plenty of nobles' daughters who where fairer, sharper, and richer than she. She was uniquely outspoken and insistent in spirit, but Casavir had swallowed more goodly enthusiasm than any young man ought as a training divine warrior. Perhaps it was the political spark of authority that fought to ignite within her but failed. Perhaps he was simply inexperienced and unwise. Perhaps she was merely the first woman to show a genuine interest in the quiet, clear-voiced paladin – somber and bleak, even then – and so he had sworn himself over to her with all the imprudence and passion permitted only by first love.

To charm a holy-squire from beneath the temple's smock, once bed him, then weep into his arms for fear of an illegitimate babe and unwanted betrothed? T'was as lief that she had never loved him – merely hated Mordred, the bloodline stud her father picked.

The reality of her emotions (and his) did not change much now, gazing back upon it all from these wounded bluffs. So strange was it to see Formosa wail and faint – this girl whose feather-high tones once decried a wizard's greed from podiums made of park benches – Casavir believed he would have done nigh anything she asked, be it fetch chicken eggs from the market or commit murder for their freedom. It was only one dark deed, she pled, cheeks sallow and hands bitter cold, but did not drink from the water goblet he had offered. Ultimatums were rushed and fraught: _"Else she would never break free. Else they would flog her for an impure wedding night. Else they will drown our babe if he has not the right look and hurl me into the street."_ There were a dozen dreadful scenarios, all with one obvious conclusion. Refusal in this was to default as a lover and father – far worse sins than violating patriarchal codes that bound her to a silvering sire's will, his bounty to be traded. The solution was bare and atrocious and horridly plain: _kill Mordred Bryce._ This was the duty Formosa Dalren asked of him.

She was too fairy-clever for a squire boy, for he believed when told this was the final way – believed it when she swore there had been only him. And still, the paladin wavered to meet what he perceived as a good man's inherent responsibility… although he pledged _"Yes, I will do it; I have to do it," _this Tyrran felt no reassurance that taking Formosa's hand in marriage was indeed God's will. So much was uncertain. And yet it was the soul path that looked clear to him; this route seemed the only one, for all its coiling shadows and perilous twists, that ended in _right_. Perhaps joining himself to this woman was no longer in question. Bloody hands made killers out of honorable men, but more frightening than failing her was failing a thought of unborn child.

And so, knowing he had been wrong – that part of him would always be wrong, shackled to a disappointed god who breathed no more life through him – Sir Casavir had killed a noble son because duty demanded it.

He did not know if Formosa truly planned a future for them or if the woman was trapped and false, his honor-binds no more than a convenient escape from servitude of a different sort. He would never learn the truth. Sixteen hours since the vile deed was done, and Casavir, death-pale for remorse, fled to Abbot Moss and confessed it all on the churchyard floor. So, one duty met and bled from him, the young man cast this life into a pyre-pit all for the duties of another. A father must protect. A husband must be loyal. A paladin must be honest. Repentance must be sincere.

More important _now_, though – more important now was that your thrust must be tempered when you strike with steel blades.

His is near-flawless, longsword departing its sheath and sinking deftly into the sternum of a charging captain. There is no need for showmanship or brandishing. This, like many other things, is a matter of both skill and restraint. The creature impales itself with its undue, hulking speed. Blood flowers. Dirt clouds howl. There is sweat cutting paths through the earth-mask on Casavir's brow, salt stinging pores, bonfire smoke filling his lungs. It is difficult to see with this cast-iron barbuta helm on, lopsided as it often felt. They are human clues, but the punctured beast does not care. He sees that Ka'talmach's elbow is solid and true. He sees that his weapon rends neatly through leather, tissue and innards. What else matters to a dying orc? Its bared fangs spit revulsion and saliva, vain threats from a dying whelp… but beady eyes show horror as they bulge and roll upwards into their sockets.

He pierces to the hilt, tearing through arteries, ensuring death; there are no prisoners in holy wars. The slaughter is clean and efficient as it wanes around them. It takes only a slight forward push, and the corpse squelches off his blade, slumping jaw-first into gravel. A lumpy tongue leaks drool onto compact soil. The men will slice it off and break each tooth for trophies. Later, they will burn these bodies like tinder, and cook their dinner in the rancid, fleshy smog.

These are farmfolk earning their simple birthright. These are men who will feed sweet corn with orc blood to master the land. It is admirable; it is petrifying. This is the lesson these veterans have to teach. They have stalked powerful tribes thick into the high pass, he and the small entourage of riders at his beck. Odds devastate, and yet there is no quarter – they are not beaten, because the core refuses. Minimal casualties have padded what was once a suicide march – not because these evolved goat-herders are especially talented, but because they are tenacious in life. Their struggle makes an answer manifest. When the last cable to your livelihood is snapped, unworthy souls cradle broken rope and starve; the _worthy_ give chase, scraping and grasping, clinging resolutely to what small fleck of success remains. Perhaps it is hope for victory. Perhaps it is anger and revenge. It is, above all, clear that personal redemption takes a great many flavors and forms.

It is clear to him that nightly devotions are not enough, whether they are given through prayer and unguent or sacred bloodletting. Patience is not enough. Guardianship, kindness and minor wrongs righted are not enough. And so Casavir is here, treading dire and headlong through these fiend-runs, under-armed and under-manned, fighting for this mineral well like holy land. He will crusade until Tyr sees fit to take him back – as a disciple renewed, or in just death.

He will not die with a legacy of regrets.

Alas, regret is a familiar bedfellow to this paladin, but Luskan wilderness and Sword Mountain caverns are weak tastes of wilderness; in spite of his travels, Casavir believes there is no nation more foreign to a child of God than the serpent courts of Neverwinter. He would languor for months in their prisons before earning a right to trial. Expelling him forever from their borders took no longer than thirty-five minutes. Callum, proven friend of his scornful master, attempts to ease Judge Oleff's verdict; mercy appeals from a Nine officer indeed do stay the executioner's guillotine. Fenthick Moss testifies to his free surrender and passivity. A handful of fellow squires – those still willing to call him brother – present themselves in silent and well-dressed support. Formosa is not there.

That this is so unlike him – a bashful boy, agonizingly shy, whose large fists clench the oaken accused's stand – does not seem to factor. Murder is murder; only distant, otherworldly threats of divine protection keep the youth's head from rolling down a chopping block stair. Instead, they rip the church cape from his shoulders, collect his signet rings in a wooden box, and march him outside their city in chains. There are precious few minutes for goodbyes, and he receives no heartfelt friendship symbols or tearful tidings for a safe journey. There is only one standard blessing from bland, blinded Father Hlam. The hoary-eyed priest clasps one of Casavir's wrists, fingers now absent every sign of noble tokenry, crosses his chest and bids a curt "May God forgive you." His palms feel stark and empty as they ride into the wood, armed with nothing but a faceless militiaman's sword. Formosa is not there to kiss them farewell.

Sir Bayford was not born within Neverwinter's walls; he is a child convert from a sea-town with too many dour, dark-haired sons. Yet when they leave upon that uneventful solstice twilight, Greycloak guards clustering him in a tried-and-true watchmen's formation, the paladin knows his time here is finished. Acceptance comes swiftly, but sorrow is crippling at this moment. He does not pass through those wing-tipped balustrade gates again – not for many years, at least – when his clear eyes have tarnished like cinder flakes, and Tyr's gospel is no more within him. God is like an echo of something ancient. And the loss feels much less consequential when Casavir thinks upon Formosa Dalren.

He never spoke to her again. A scarce year later, while his metal calves sink in the brown mire of Port Llast, a Neverwintan courier arrives with one letter penned in languid cursive. It says only that the child is not his. It is from her handmaid.

He has forgiven her since; now a beast-slayer of thirty-six years with the weight and scars of far more battles upon him, it is easy to understand why a pretty nobleman's daughter might have done what she did to young Sir Casavir Bayford. Formosa is not wicked beyond her woman's selfishness; she has no constitution for duty, but took no joy in destroying him. Guilt is in the places she is not. An outcast's life is lulling in its meaninglessness, besides; where once bare knuckles terrified, they now feel lighter and curl into tighter blows. Banishment has spared him a costly siege, corrupt Helmites and a withering plague. There is no way of knowing if the girl he once thought to love has been claimed by these dangers unwarranted. But it is of no use wondering – they will not permit him return, and this paladin does not wish to. The holy warrior is frustrated only that he cannot wade through time to advise his reckless self against lies laced in comely blue satin. But this is hindsight, useless and painful to dabble in; he knows well that orc knives will be the end of him, and there is austere comfort in that inevitability.

Two blacksmiths are closing at one side and a mounted Katriona drives five final Eye-Gougers into flame traps, barbarians fleeing as they scorch. It is necessary. The paladin whirls around and detaches a spearman's head from a lumbering body. Teeming metal releases a crisp, musical _'SCHWANG_.' Crimson jets into stale, smoggy air. It is demanded. He whistles loudly for his horse. Casavir will cough viciously tonight, a familiar routine whenever he attempts to lie down – spitting mucus that is black from all this tar they have released into the ravine air. It does not matter much right now.

Sword slippery with gore, he picks up the decapitated brute's pike and swings it hard at a last, desperate straggler that rushes him from behind. Ringed wood cracks loudly against one horned temple. The fiend falls. He javelins a sharp spearhead between two ribs. Chainmail cracks open easily. Ka'talmach, with no excess clemency or bloodlust, leaves his adversary pinned into the ground like a preserved beetle. There is a miserable gurgle… that is all. It twitches. It froths scarlet. Three more minutes, and it will be gone. Three more minutes – that is all it takes for another death march to run itself dry.

They are alive. And they are alone again, save for the dying animals that choke miserably around them.

Though the warrior's head is dinging steadily, his war horns and drummers are quiet, now. With a tidy squadron of Logram's scouts slain, Sir Bayford's forces sustain no more than four notable wounds and one fallen archer unlucky enough to catch a throwing knife. There is hardly any battle left to speak of… merely the dismal work of cutting survivor throats. Men regroup and build a stretcher for their dead fellow. Casavir's courser finds him, sable hide caked in mud and massive hooves stuck with slate and minced tissue. He hooks a thumb into its bit just as Katriona trots back and drops merrily enough from her stout roan. Much is silent. The gorge crackles, flushed with the dark odor of dead orc.

"And that would be another marked victory for us, I believe. One less troupe of savages roaming our bluffs," his menacing sergeant announces, thumping to her studded boot soles before him; the woman's sigh is belly-deep and content, like a miller after a good meal. She pats her armored stomach. It bangs. Katriona wears a necklace strung not with pearls but orc talons; by tonight, it will be clustered with fresh prizes, flesh still clinging to keratin roots. Her alto is brazen and ragged – brutally triumphant. Her body is soaked in stinking blood. "A shame we didn't catch last night's patrol with these burn pits, as well, sir. But I suppose our boys ought to leave some stragglers for the commander's poor Greycloaks – else we wouldn't be sporting! Isn't that the way of it, sir? Sure is."

Laughter after skirmishing is expected, if not entirely welcome. There is something joyous about the way this officer soaks in combat; she glows a thuggish, brilliant carmine in the slaughter. They have ridden together for over a decade – more than enough time to doubly prove her martial value – and yet Casavir finds that he has trouble looking directly at his second for reasons far removed from womanness. Though in truth, he does not so much mind. While her enthusiasm for bloodshed makes him uneasy, there is nothing of court lady in Katriona – nothing of Formosa Dalren, save the flaxen hue of their hair. It is a difference this man appreciates. He is far more comfortable in dealings with a soldier, whatever gladness this cruel trade stirs within her. She is simple. She is something that he knows.

The paladin's helmet is heavy; he pulls it off, mane molded into stiff, filthy fringe. His ears are dully ringing. The sergeant hands him an unused cleaning rag even as her own smile dribbles blood. Thanks is unneeded, and his voice – the same polite squire's speech, clanging low church bells, startlingly clear for these unforgiving peaks – is inappropriate where they are. Instead, Casavir dabs the war paint from his eyelids until their color is visible again. Katriona leaves hers to sink and stain.

"You did well," is all he grants her, but this meager congratulation is praise enough from a hollowed paladin. She bows. Blood keeps rolling down her harsh-drawn chin.

It is foul and uncomplicated, this homeland crusade he fights.

And perhaps it is a holy land, at that – his own holy hand – for desolate and barren, this is where the world's last honesty stands. Old Owl Well has lain itself bare before him. Out here, things are not so confusing, he has found. A blade swings true toward an enemy that never saunters in unnoticed. Dishonor barrels in – swathed in the mantle of bodily cowardice, of immediate and inexcusable desertion when odds surge against your meager flock. Sin trumpets itself in gnashing teeth, war gongs, wrinkled boar hide on a man-pig's face – corporal punishments that gulp due penance down in blood pay. Death is obvious as the heavy, spurred morningstar that cracks on its chain and glints fierce morning light before it shatters the brain from your skull. It is easy to be _right_ again in the honesty of it all. It is easier, he thinks – and catches a face full of blood spray when he rips the spear from that beast's chest – to be here.

It is not like Neverwinter. In Neverwinter, where men are monsters, when dishonor is in the volumes of court precedent, and sin wraps itself in velvet gowns as quietly as the pale sun breaches these crags, wrongness is ubiquitous. It comes, like all things man, draped in a guise of duty.

Neverwinter's vultures call him exile – he who has been stripped, outcast, left with no title and no relic of life.

The orcs call him Ka'talmach – _"He Does Not Fear Death_."

Casavir splinters the wheezing raider's skull with his boot, and it is clear they are not so different, after all.


	2. Poenitentia

**Poenitentia**

Casavir hates orcs.

This has not always been so, the man is well aware, and such focused hate in any derivation is unbecoming of a holy paladin. Yet he does not deny his prejudice, nor can Sir Bayford deny its intensity. There is no point when this disgust and resentment is felt so strongly. Ka'talmach is not the blackguard witch-king these mountain tribes name in hushed voices – his is a soul made of honor, compassion, formality and (he hopes) fairness – but lies only compounds wrath-sins, whether they are towards oneself or one's fellows. And though benevolent gods teach forgiveness more often than unwavering ferocity, the crusader does not believe he has broken vows with this. On the contrary – when his hammer rends a raiding party into marrow-mush, blade splitting a hunter's jugular – this exiled knight feels more _right_ than anywhere else in Faerûn. He is more than right; he is righteous. Perhaps it is his calling.

There is no shame or wrongness here, despite what softer religions taught. Those beasts are foul, chaos irredeemable; they deserve Tyr's scorn, and the justice that is His warriors' punishment. They are incapable of mercy, and this faithful soldier of God grants them none. So he admits it freely. Casavir _hates_ orcs.

He hates them for all they have done, and all he knows – if left unchecked – they will do.

There are no tribes within fair Neverwinter, the city protected by Nasher's Nine as much as it is by ancient magic and those solid balustrades. Roaming clans are no threat to civilized peoples. Before his exile, the paladin had never encountered one; he knew only of horrid tales, mercenary fare, cautionary yarns which he assumed came with liberal flair. Spooked townspeople loved exaggeration; they covet wild monsters to whisper of while tucked safely among evening Watch routes and cobbled streets. Superstitious farmers will watch the edges of their soy fields and dusk and spin such warnings, vilifying what they fear. Young Sir Bayford viewed these stories with the lawman's skepticism favored by Tyr. Yet now, having ridden so far past the lands of knights and nobles, leaving comforts of thick walls behind, he is wiser. He has come to meet a foul, barbarian truth. He is not the innocent squire-boy any longer.

Some things, he has found, are meant to be hated.

When Casavir first arrived in these plagued meadows – a twenty-two-year-old man who had never seen real warfare before – and swallowed the breadth of destruction here, the paladin wept himself sick. He wept because he had no idea; because the problems that had driven him here and broken his vows were _nothing_ – nothing compared to this.

He had patrolled them long enough now to have run dry.

_Two brothers_, Katriona tells him one night by a campfire, jamming her spit into the charcoal like a curse. Two brothers she has lost to them, one eaten out of his swaddling cloth; a house her grandfather built; and wheat crops that kept their bellies full for generations. "I will not sit on my farm waiting for the raids to come again," his second spat when they first met – a month before they began to hunt, and five years before their purge of Old Owl Well began. She had bought cider for the rain-wet paladin and sat close beside him, both of them having stumbled into a raggedy Mere inn to escape blackening storm clouds. She had seen him earlier at the crossing, but had not known what to say. She didn't aim to seem odd, or forward, like the _whining others_ – so this woman said – wanting only to send him off alone on some peasant mission with nothing but hollow thanks to repay his efforts. She had glimpsed his holy Mark. She heard, pardon the gossip, he rode here to help. She wanted to go with him.

She would make the crusade clear.

"_Have you come for the orcs?"_ ranchers would ask him, astonished, barely daring to hope. _"Has Neverwinter finally sent someone? Are you here for Logram Eye-Gouger?" _

This foul-mouthed huntress presumed the same, though at that time Casavir had not decided – and yet her tone, so different, struck him. She did not plea or beg with fear. She was hard; she carried rusted iron and wore nothing but padded rags upon her back. Her grim talisman boasted only four tusks then, tied short around the lady's collarbone… it held over a hundred now, and clinked proudly at her waist. "They took everything. I cannot bring back what those bastards ripped from me. So I'm going to take everything away from them."

He is not Katriona, the snarling sergeant whose laughter rings jubilant through a mouth full of blood. He takes no particular joy in this. But when Casavir crashes steel into the frame of an orc and brings its perverse body hulking to sudden, unmourned, deservéd death… he feels a small rush of satisfaction. _'Another threat removed,' _the paladin thinks, gratified only through struggle. _'One more innocent avenged.' _It is not delight, no. It is the pleasure of a service provided.

When the men take a tribal ground – on those rare occasion orcs are beaten up these paths and straight into their ramshackle tents – he leaves none of them alive. Throats are sliced clean and passionless. These mountains are stained with black blood from many fiends. Male, female, young or old – though the holy knight finds no happiness in this bleak trade, they all must die. Casavir knows what they will do if his mercy is loosened. He will not be responsible for another murdered countryman. He will shoulder this burden of guilt for them.

There are few questions in his mind. Sir Bayford has no blessed armies, no coffers, no king; he does have his conviction. And he has his hate.

He hates orcs for every corn hill burnt to the ground, fertile earth left scorched and barren – he hates them for chickens swallowed whole; well-loved shepherd dogs spitted on fence posts, paws copped off; cats and rabbits roasted; milk cows ripped to fleshy bits.

He hates orcs for every family cottage reduced to cinders, all its windows smashed, scarlet flushed up painted walls.

He hates orcs for every headless body and bodiless head he has found, the faces of Sword Coast sons wrenched into perpetual terror – eyes bulging colorless, scalps cut with shears, tongues pulled from their mouths. The damage is profane and it is beyond the pale.

He hates them for every mother running to the local sheriffs with cries of missing sons; he hates them for every child that he has seen wandering these plains – left shoeless, homeless, parentless by devils that belong only in campfire dreams.

He hates them for every sharecropper's daughter run screaming from the ashes of her father's stable – fire licking at long, torn hair – to collapse at the paladin's feet. He hates them for the bright blood that runs thickly through her skirts.

It is clear. When he has succeeded – when he has fallen upon those slavering fiends until there are no more caves to breed them; culled their sick, grotesque march; bled them every drop they drew from wives, children, tillers who did no wrongs – justice will be served. Old Owl Well will be red earth, its gravel made of tusk and bone. Their blood penance – and his – will be full circle. And Tyr will take him back.

So Casavir hates orcs.


End file.
